2013 Western States 100 Prediction Contest Results

Waaaaay more quickly than last year, here are the results of our 2013 Western States Prediction Contest. Before we move on, we wanted to thank Mitchell Goodman for being the programming brains behind this contest for the fifth straight year!

The Winners
Thank Injinji, Montrail, and Mountain Hardwear for providing the great prizes for the contest. Without them, the only thing to come out of the contest would be bragging rights! On to the winners!

John Medinger (8 points) wins a pair of Injinji Trail 2.0 toesocks, a pair of Montrail shoes, a Mountain Hardwear running bottom, and a Mountain Hardwear Way2Cool performance shirt. Tropical John is the first repeat winner of our Western States prediction contest having won in 2009. He also repeats as the best women’s picker, as he won with one point in 2011. On the men’s side this year, John correctly picked Mike Morton for third and Dylan Bowman for fifth, while picking Timothy Olson one spot too low in second. His other two scoring men’s picks were Rob Krar in fourth (actually second) and Karl Meltzer for sixth (actually tenth). On the women’s side, he correctly predicted Amy Sproston, Meghan Arbogast, Rory Bosio, and Aliza Lapierre taking third through sixth, only accumulating one point in picking Nikki Kimball for the win (actually second).

Kevin Landis(9 points) wins a pair of Injinji Trail 2.0 toesocks, a pair of Montrail shoes, and a Mountain Hardwear running bottom. Four contestants ended up with nine points, but only two – Kevin and Thomas Riley – correctly picked both masters winners. (Honorable mention to Kirstin Zosel and Matthew Harker!) Both Thomas and Kevin had the same picks for the win (Timothy Olson and Rory Bosio) and both picked Nikki Kimball for second woman; however, Kevin was closer with his men’s second place pick of Mike Morton versus Thomas’s pick of Nick Clark, so we’re awarding second to Kevin on merit.

The Overall Contest Field
With the rapidly growing field, the competition in the prediction contest continues to improve even with much more difficult (and, therefore, unpredictable) race conditions in 2013 than in 2012. Here’s a breakdown of the number of folks tallying 50 or fewer points other the past five years: 2009 – 46, 2010 – 107, 2011 – 274, 2012 – 446, 2013 – 694. It’s a good thing we don’t give away silver buckles or we’d be broke!

Our annual group-think predictions have done pretty well in the past. Over the previous three years, the group-think predictions tallied 20 points in both 2010 and 2011 before improving to 14 points last year. This year’s Group-Think Predictions worsened… but only by one point to 15 points. A total of 66 individuals (a mere 8% of entries) picked better than the group. While the group was much more accurate with the men (4 points) than the women (10 points) last year, it was much more even at 7 and 8 points respectively for the men and women this year.

Below are the full results:

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Men’s PredictionsPaul Flowersperfectly picked the men’s winner (Timothy Olson) and spots three through six (Morton, Sharman, Bowman, Clark) to end up with zero points on the men’s side. Incredible work, Paul! You’ve earned your choice of an iRunFar hat or visor if you’d like one.

Women’s Predictions
As mentioned above, Tropical John and Thomas Riley tied for the women’s win with one point each.

Final Words
Thanks to the more than 800 individuals who took part in the contest… that’s nearly double the total number of entrants in Western States! We had a lot of fun bringing it to you and hope you had a lot of fun participating. We hope to bring you more fun contests in the future.